Providing perspective on the economics and politics of sports business in Florida...and the Rays' campaign for a new stadium in Tampa Bay.

Friday, June 19, 2015

Read of the Week: Lightning Prove Again the Value of Sports to Tampa

In case you missed it, Joe Henderson's post-playoff piece about how the Lightning's bid for the Stanley Cup explored the emotional side of sports subsidies and our intrinsic desire to keep our teams - often at any cost. He spells it out:

Name something else that could cause an estimated 19,000 fans
to come to Amalie Arena on Monday night to watch the game on the mammoth
scoreboard. That was nearly double the crowd the Tampa Bay Rays drew
for a home game about 20 miles away in St. Petersburg, and that raises a
question Tampa and the surrounding area have grappled with for years:
Are these teams worth the cost?A point needs to be made up front about the economic impact big-time sports has on a community: ‘Tis a trifle.I get it.Eventually we’ll get down to dollar-crunching in the effort to
get the Rays a new stadium in the right location, and the price tag
will be alarming. They’ll toss around economic impact studies to justify
the expense, and most of those will be shot full of holes by people who
understand spending that kind of money for a sports team makes no
fiscal sense.
Or cents, either.But I suspect it will happen anyway, on one side of the Bay or
the other, and the area will be better for it — and not because of the
money they bring here.The Lightning just spent the last month reinforcing that point.

It's a point that's been made before - my favorite example is the "mailman in the driveway" example from Pete Kerasotis. Here is an excerpt from his piece in 2010:

"How about that game last night?"

It was my mailman, with me standing at the end of my driveway, chatting about the Orlando Magic's dominating Game 1 win against the Atlanta Hawks the night before.

This, I thought, is what a sports team does. It brings people together with a common topic, and even a common sense of pride. It does it in boardrooms and family rooms, at the water cooler and at the checkout line.

Talk about the latest action by the county commission doesn’t
dominate the water cooler conversation. People won’t tell their
grandkids years from now about the great regulations enacted by city
council, but they will recall that year Tampa was turned on its ear by
its hockey team.

At the end of the day, Henderson acknowledges stadiums are very expensive and cities should spend wisely. But........

There is something else to remember, too. About midway through
the third quarter of that Super Bowl game, do you think anyone cared
about the terms of the Bucs’ lease at Ray Jay?Some people say Tampa is not rich enough, large enough, or
passionate enough to support three pro sports teams. I think they’re
wrong. People used to say hockey would never work here, either. These
teams are part of the city’s fabric and identity. And when times are
flush, like now, they bring people together like nothing else can.As the Lightning just proved, you can’t put a price tag on that.

Unfortunately, municipalities DO have to put a price tag on it as pro teams have become fiercer than ever at the negotiating table and ruthless as ever in demanding public subsidies. At some point, pro sports is not worth the cost. But Henderson is right - few fans in Tampa Bay are worried about that this week.
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32 comments:

"At some point, pro sports is not worth the cost. But Henderson is right - few fans in Tampa Bay are worried about that this week. "

Of course fans aren't worried about the cost... it's the city councillors who need to worry about that because let's be honest, if it were up to fans or lay people, they want everything for free and not worry about cost!! What a moronic thing to say!

The irony is that in a way he is right too... Only a "few fans in TB are worried" or care about the Rays....

"They want everything for free"? NewsFlash! We pay taxes as well, "moron"..."Only a few fans"? Only "morons" point to the attendance & say that, actually the Rays are the most popular pro team in most of Florida...You must be that person that lives in Tampa & never goes to Pinellas or lives in Pinellas & never goes to Tampa, or lives outside of the cities & never ventures outside of your small town, Which one is it?

Many people care about the Ray., the t.v. ratings prove it. Not many people care about the stadium experience. We live in the sunshine state people want to be able to see outside. The current stadium does not allow for that.

And there you have it - wanting a product for free without paying to go see them live and sustain the team and contribute to a better stadium experience (by attending you demonstrate that it's worth building a new stadium).

Having said that, then you won't have any problems following "your" team on TV when they move to Montreal... I'm sure Montreal can work out a deal to include the Tampa area as part of their viewing figures - lol.

Henderson offers the simple choice here between "Yes baseball!" or "No baseball." There is no nuance. There is no notion of resource scarcity. Simply, there is no connection to reality. It's like saying, "regardless of cost, would you like to drive more nice cars or fewer nice cars?" His opinion is a pointless waste of time and ink.

More useful to everyone would be the per capita cost of a new stadium in each county. What amount does each person owe? And then a comparison to several other things that might be invested in--substitutes.

Henderson asks: For infinity money, would you like some baseball or no baseball?

The question should be: For $700M, would you like a baseball stadium OR X new teachers/school facilities OR X additional firefighters/police officers? Or any other potentially desirable public policy alternative (unconnected to the sports journalists' purpose/paycheck). I would be curious to see what $700M could buy in Tampa or St. Pete. And no one should forget the alternative of spending zero dollars and cutting taxes instead, or doing something else to keep the money in taxpayers' hands. Less glamorous isn't it, the slow organic growth of a community (one condo building, one restaurant, one museum, one new business, one road or sewer, one fixed school at a time).

it's not $700 million to the Rays or other stuff, only a part of whatever $ would Tampa put up, and it's money that came from mostly visitors that suppose to go to back into things that refill the hotel beds...

The value in the Lightning winning for Tampa is the exposure it gave them to market worldwide Tampa & Channelside as a great place w/ great weather & you can get your hockey on at the same time! Which is great for us because I'm sure it will bring a few more wealthy people to the area that will buy a place, spend their money here, and maybe bring their business...Which is what I been trying to get you people to understand that isn't just the city spending & what they get back in the team paying the loan, it's about drawing thousands of people from outside your area to spend money here, to move here, that buys gas, shirts, food, houses, etc., and pays additional taxes on everything!Brooksville would love to have 10k people coming into to their town 41 or 81 x's a year taking their money from Ocala & spending it in their town, THATS BASIC ECONOMICS...It's why the Dakotas are doing so well, the drillers make their money and pump it back into their towns economy...It's why Clearwater Beach is doing so well, it's how Orlando makes the money to keep building because their the #1 tourist spot, and so on...BUT, it doesn't happen overnight, it takes time, when Tampa makes that "investment", wait until they host the All-Star Game, then things will be rolling for Channelside/Tampa. And to take it to the extreme, ask those around the Cubs or Red Sox or Orioles stadiums how it is, places that been around for a while. Why? Because unlike NOahs "sticker shock", we got to remember that it would be a park that is to be there for generations to come...

People don't relocate to a city bc there is a (winning) hockey team - they look for more important things - like basic infrastructure, schools, good quality of living. A pro sports team is a bonus - nothing more.

No offense, but to say people don't choose to move somewhere bc of a sports team shows you have NO clue & shouldn't be commenting on something you don't know about...Ask Dunedin how many people from Canada live there bc of the Jays? I rest my case.

So now you are talking about Dunedin, Fl? You mean people from Canada moved there bc of the Jays' spring training camp? You are an idiot... of course the weather has nothing to do with it....

And even if they did "move" purely on account of the training camp... it's just that.... SPRING TRAINING! Which means the people who moved there aren't ones who have kids in school or have a need to work....

"Such an exodus would be a blow to the many Canadian "snowbirds" who have purchased condos and homes in Dunedin to follow their favorite team. But city officials are mobilizing a promotional campaign to draw another team if the Jays fly away. Business leaders, quoted by the Tampa Bay Times earlier this year, say a spring training site has an economic impact of $30 million to $50 million a year for the surrounding community."

"The Jays in 1977 brought along thousands of Canadian fans, many of whom purchased property"

yes YOU are... for one, trying to equate spring training games with the majors..... and secondly, did you even read the article? "This is our first time coming to Dunedin for a game, but the weather was a big motivator" ... In other words, they came down here bc of the weather..... That's why spring training is held in FL and Arizona.... and it's a part time vacation move. Not permanent.... !

Let's see how many people from Tampa will relocate to Montreal when the Rays move!

Kos planned his trip to see recent New York transplants and Dunedin residents Joanne and Lou Ross after securing tickets to Sunday’s game against the Blue Jays, but the dedication wouldn’t be there if his team moved spring training to Arizona, he said. Even among other Florida spring training spots, Tampa wins out simply for the fishing.

So Tampa or St. Pete should build a new MLB stadium in order to draw more Canadian tourists/snowbirds just like Dunedin? Should our aspirations not be higher?

Okay, I give up. Florida is probably doomed to another 100 years of being just a place where wealthy people from somewhere else vacation/retire. Low wage hospitality jobs have gotten us this far, right? We should be more interested in attracting and retaining smart people in their 30s to come here and start businesses, raise families, and generate locally grown wealth. Baseball's presence here shouldn't be a subsidy to refurbish God's Waiting Room.

In 16 years, per capita GDP in Florida has grown just 6%. That number would be embarrassing in places where the people are educated enough to understand its implications. We need real growth, broad growth, not more retirees gobbling social services. The smartest people in the country don't graduate and rush to Florida. They go to NYC, DC, Boston, Chicago, Palo Alto, Austin, Nashville, Atlanta, Portland, Seattle. And they certainly don't make their decisions based on baseball. Florida should recruit from the front of the next generation not the end of the last generation.

This is a hell of a good question/point of view. And a broad debate on this topic (and others like mass transportation) must start soon rather than a workshop on how to develop or not develop the Tropicana site, which did not help anyone on St-Pete vision for the next 15-25 years.

Baseball (and other major sports) should be an added-value to a vibrant economic market with companies, head offices, workers, families, ... Right now it's the opposite. Let's built a stadium, let's wait at least one generation (to have more fans that will attend games) and the vitality of the Rays/MLB will be beneficial for the community.

If I bump into one more UF/FSU/USF grad waiting tables at some new "high-end" local restaurant or waiting to inherit his dad's car dealership, I will put my face through a cinderblock. The expectations are just so different elsewhere in the country. The best of the best are competing--not just nationally, but internationally--to be difference makers in their chosen fields. Florida is laid-back, which--like Greece or Spain--is great for appealing to vacationers. But my god, the state could use some of the drive and edge that is commonplace in the truly competitive parts of the country. The State of Florida, leader in.... citrus (agro), sugar (agro), and beaches? What century are we in?

Yeah, the Lightning thing was a head scratcher for sure. But I suppose if someone was willing to fly in from out of town for a game, they could afford tickets on stubhub.

Persoanlly I had a great time coming into Florida last year for a Rays game. We had a wedding to go to in Orlando, so afterwards we rented a car and drove to St Pete. If there was no team in St Pete, we would have just gone to Miami instead. We're doing the same in Chicago this year. Are there more people like me that go places to see new ballparks? Probably, but I'd think that would be the icing on the cake, something that is there, but not counted on to be a significant portion of a team and region's revenue.

Just want to thank you for all your hard work in putting this blog site together - naysayers and rude ones aside - I think collecting all the stadium info here is a great way to prevent some revisionist history